Perhaps I require revolution rather than mending day
or need to get back to my ill channels,
disinterest, a fetish or two
and a more obvious sin than procrastination.
Force is never equal, not in my calculations,
nor is severance or servitude.
I tell myself lies that sound like truths. That’s clever.
I turn out my pockets for dust, coins,
and palaver. That’s too clever.
When I divide it evenly, the cavalry will come
with their shiny tear gas and lucrative immortality.
When I hold it out, the futurists will come
with their holograms and plebiscites, their ghastly chums
full of gosh and ingratitude.
When I hide it away, it will be covered up by
brazen vote cards and gaudy guilt.
Here are my stupid boots, my placards, a little book
of tasteful green catechism. Already the rocks hate me,
the wind turns its back, the day sours,
wearing out my slang, my tokens, my renewables,
the hopeless gluten between my bones, my brawn
and its wasteland of humours.
The only way to revolve is to stand still, give up my axis.
There’s nothing special in that, except when
ground shudders or the wind refuses to hold me.
Even now my shoes fill with doubt and slick.
I can’t mend, I can’t fly but at least I can keep
skeptic tremor over so much prior glut.
Shame is my sticky thing.

About Jill Jones

Jill Jones has published ten books of poetry, and a number of chapbooks. The most recent are Brink, The Leaves Are My Sisters, The Beautiful Anxiety, which won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry in 2015, and Breaking the Days, which was shortlisted for the 2017 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Her work is represented in major anthologies including the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry. In 2014 she was poet-in-residence at Stockholm University. She is a member of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide.